Biography
Devin Soper is a Scholarly Communications Librarian at the Florida State University Libraries. In that role, he oversees initiatives related to the FSU Research Repository and Open Access Policy implementation, and is also responsible for advancing the Libraries’ copyright support, journal publishing, and open educational resource (OER) programs. Devin came to FSU from the University of British Columbia, where he served both as an Intellectual Property & Copyright Librarian and as Managing Librarian of the Chapman Learning Commons. Devin has an MA in English Literature and Theory from the University of Victoria, Canada, and an MLIS from the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on the intersections of copyright and digital publishing in higher education, with an emphasis on open access and open educational resources.
Leadership Portfolio
Devin led a number of OER-related projects and initiatives during his participation in the Open Education Leadership Program, including an open education symposium, an OER mini-grant program for instructors at his institution, and a campus-wide OER research project comprised of faculty and student surveys and interviews with senior university administrators.
Devin selected the open education symposium as his capstone project. In addition to planning and promoting the symposium, he also created a publicly accessible, Creative Commons-licensed toolkit of symposium planning materials and outputs. In addition to symposium outputs such as presentation slides, recordings, and notes from breakout sessions, the toolkit also includes a variety of planning and marketing materials such as budget and logistical spreadsheets, flyers and social media graphics, opening remarks, convener guidelines, panel discussion questions, lunchtime discussion prompts, a day-of program, a participant survey, and so on. The toolkit will be useful to anyone engaged in the planning and promotion of similar events at other institutions.
Current Work
Devin is currently working with a Mathematics professor to publish an open textbook on financial mathematics as part of FSU Libraries’ OER mini-grant program. In addition, he is actively engaged in the following:
- analyzing data from the OER assessment project he conducted over the 2017-18 academic year, with a view to publishing the results with his fellow investigators;
- contacting prospective donors to raise funds for on-campus Open Textbook Network workshops in October 2018;
- Advocating for the implementation of a course marking program to identify courses with affordable materials at his institution; and
- serving on a number of statewide committees related to OER and textbook affordability initiatives, including content creation for an Affordable Learning Florida portal and planning for a consortial OER Summit in late 2018.
